I used to cry all the time.

 

I remember, as a kid, crying on the first day of school every year. The crying stemmed from the anxiety I felt about entering into a new place, with new people. It was the unknown that scared me.

 

I remember being in first grade, and having a breakdown before our Christmas Show, where we had to sing in the gymnasium in front of all the parents. My teacher gave me a special bell necklace to give me courage. My friend Jimmie looked at me in disgust and said, with so much first grade sass, “If I cried all the time, maybe I’d get special treatment too!”

 

So that kind of crying, the kind that stems from fear and anxiety, wasn’t so good. The last time I cried like that was probably about nine months ago, when I got the call that I’d been accepted to go on The World Race. But generally speaking, as an adult, the Lord has worked with me to learn that nothing is ever as bad as I imagine it will be; that everything will be okay. So I don’t cry much anymore because of fear or anxiety.

 

But there are other kinds of crying too, apart from the fear-and-anxiety kind. There’s the kind of crying that comes when your heart is touched by something or someone, or broken by something or someone. There’s the kind that comes when your heart is so full of joy and wonder that you just have to release it somehow.

 

I’ve worried for the first four months of the Race because I haven’t been experiencing emotions on a level that made me cry. I cried with frustration in Uganda because I couldn’t figure out how to cook anything over a charcoal stove, and the rice was mushy and the beans were still hard, but that didn’t count. I cried in Rwanda over some hard constructive feedback, but that didn’t count either, because that was still about me. In Ethiopia, I witnessed a ministry partner become so moved by an encounter with a woman on the street that he had to go off by himself for a minute to shed a few tears. But me? I was okay.

 

And then came India. And specifically, our last day of being able to hang out with our kids.

 

We were leaving on a Friday and had all of Thursday free to pack and to see whomever we wanted to see before we left. I spent that morning in our room trying to get some things done. Priority Number One was to dye my hair in an attempt to kill the lice that our kids so lovingly shared with us. But I didn’t even get that far before the breakdown happened.

 

All of a sudden I just started crying. I was frustrated about the lice. I was sad about leaving good accommodations with hot showers and reliable WiFi.

 

But also, I realized how much I would miss the kids with whom we’d spent the last month.

 

There’s Eloise, who I would take home tomorrow if I could. Five years old, and no one in her life can tell her anything about her early years, because nobody knows. Nobody knows where the scar on her face came from, whether she was born that way or whether something far more sinister happened. All they know is that she showed up at SCH from another orphanage at age four or five along with two babies with special needs who she was basically caring for. But Eloise has blossomed at SCH. She is a talented dancer. She’s learning to identify and write her letters. She loves her pink shoes with the sequins, and she named the baby doll she got for Christmas “Jesus.”

 

There’s Michele, whom I’ve written about previously. She’s the two year old who gets into everything, the one who had the surgery on her intestines as a baby, the one who loves nothing more than playing with shaving cream. On our last day together, we went to the park. She had a slice of pizza in one hand and was holding my hand with the other, and as we walked slowly along the path I thought, “You know, I think I really want to be a mom.” I never knew that for sure before. Michele taught me that.

 

And there’s Margaret, the one who has cerebral palsy who I hoped to help “unlock.” In my month with Margaret, I saw her smile and I saw her cry and I saw her get annoyed and I saw her taking in everything around her. She’s in there. Jesus loves her. Once, when I was praying aloud for her while holding her, she smiled this beautiful smile. She knows.

 

I could go on and on. There were all the kids in the preschool class – Joel, Phil, Ariana, Bethany, Zhara, Dhalia, Aiden, Riley, Aloe, Alicia. They’ve had to deal with everything from surgeries early in life to cleft palates to dwarfism to missing digits. And that’s just the physical. Someday, when they’re older, they’ll realize that while they were deeply loved by those who cared for him, they were also given up by their biological parents. They’ll have to go through some hard stuff. I hope and pray that each of these kids has a forever family out there. I pray they find them soon and that SCH will be a brief stop along the way. But mostly, I hope that they find refuge in the God who was always with them.

 

Pray with me for these kids. Look for kids around you who need a little extra love. Give your own kids an extra squeeze tonight.

 

And love them to the point of tears.

 

In order to protect the privacy of the children, real names are not used in the above blog. Their stories, however, are very real.

 

If you’d like to help support any of the children in the above blog, please e-mail [email protected]. In particular, five-year-old Eloise currently has no sponsors and is attending SCH’s preschool rather than the public school because there is no money to pay for her school fees. As a smart and sociable little girl, she should be in school. You can help make that happen. Thank you for everything you do to support children!